Christmas greetings….

The Spirit of Christmas

While the word “Xmas” is most often substituted for “Christmas ” these days. The fact is we cannot and dare not take the “Christ” out of Christmas.

Christmas is an honouring and celebration of the birth of the man, Jesus. Yes, much controversy surrounds his history and legacy because, well it was 2000 years ago! That’s a long time.

What time and archeology and good historical analysis have shown regarding Jesus, however, is that most likely the historical account is true, that there was the man named Jesus, who made some pretty dramatic claims about his mission in life, and backed most of those up.

So, the historical Jesus account was most likely true. The possibility of his being physically resurrected from the dead is still hotly debated. Were he not actually resurrected then a lot of Christianity’s claims and ground to stand on could be severely challenged.

All that said, despite the Crusades and the burning of witches and all of that horrible stuff, most modern day scholars and theologians agree that Christianity is, and was always meant to be, a philosophy that promoted PEACE and can and should be promoted as one that was meant to originally be a spirituality rooted in and born from compassion and love.

What is compassion? Love in action. I’m sure most philosophers or theologians would whole heartedly agree, if challenged to define “God”, would say that He or It’s greatest character attribute is love. Even Islam believes in this (although interprets the ultimate application and ruling of that quite differently than modern day Christians do!)

So, safely said, love IS God’s ultimate essence. And how is love expressed? By compassion. Where there is compassion there is love….and there too is “God”. That’s the “It” aspect of God.

The true spirit of Christmas, then, is truly “tidings of good will” arising from our care and compassion for others, which is ultimately love in action. God, through us, being God.

That my dear friends, is my sermon for this Christmas. Feel free to comment! I wish you all a most blessed Christmas.

Nelson